


Rewrite An Ending Or Two

by thelilacfield



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Eventual Happy Ending, Eventual Smut, Everyone Needs A Hug, F/M, Family Feels, Fix-It of Sorts, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Post-Canon Fix-It, Pregnancy, Sam Wilson is a Gift, Wanda Maximoff Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-13
Updated: 2020-04-27
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:26:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22244821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thelilacfield/pseuds/thelilacfield
Summary: “I found out I was pregnant.” Sam’s face softens into a smile, and she feels the shadow of one cross her own face, rubbing a small circle over her belly. “And I...I don’t know. I can’t explain it. I was...devastated. That he won’t get to see them. That they’ll spend their entire lives with nothing of their father but photographs and stories. But I...I’m happy.”Wanda is resurrected from the snap to discover that she's pregnant with Vision's twins. Her life must change completely for the sake of the future of her family. Everything changes - and all she wants is Vision back.
Relationships: Wanda Maximoff/Vision
Comments: 31
Kudos: 96





	1. i cannot feel you around

**A/N:** So this is the big post- _Endgame_ fix-it that I've been working on on and off since before the movie dropped. I've been very very excited about this and even changed some initial plot to make it fit better with the movie. I really hope that everyone enjoys this - you can consider this to be your canon until such time as the MCU gives us something else! I'm on twitter and tumblr @mximoffromanoff if anyone wants to chat!

 **warning:** mentions of suicidal thoughts 

* * *

_Everything red and orange and pain and screaming. Everything terrible and hopeless and wishing for oblivion. Everything memories._

"Wanda?"

She jerks upright, veiled in the cold sweat of fear, and turns to Vision next to her, his eyes soft and his hand laid gently over her arm. Even in the gloom, his face is filled with concern, and she curls closer to him, a kiss brushed to her temple. His voice warm and sweet in her ear, the quiet question. "Another nightmare?"

"The same one as always," she says, and he winces, holding her gently closer. "I _hate_ it. Why does my head do it to me?"

"You know it's just a nightmare," he says, holding her closer. "You could never hurt me." And she breathes out slowly, trying to relax, and lets him hold her. Glances at the ring on her hand, the dark metal that matches the ring on his, rests her head against her husband's shoulder and waits for the calm to settle over her in a soothing veil.

She starts when the splintered sound of a cry crackles into life on the baby monitor, and feels Vision chuckle slightly. "I'll get them," he says, kissing her cheek and straightening his twisted shirt as he climbs out of bed, sliding his feet into his slippers and padding out of the room.

Straightening up in bed, tugging her fingers through the tangles of her hair, she feels true warmth bloom bright through her chest when Vision nudges the door open with his foot, and she smiles at their son blinking sleepily at her, tiny face red and shiny with tears. "Try as I might, I can't carry both of them at once," he says, and she smiles, holding out her arms to cradle their son, shushing his quiet whimpers. "Do you want me to heat up bottles?"

"No, it's okay, just throw me the nursing pillow," she says, and he nods, tugging the pillow out from under the bed and leaving again while she wraps it carefully around herself, manoeuvring their baby into the correct position.

When Vision returns, he fusses with her pillows to prop her up better, helping her adjust herself to hold both babies and sitting next to her on the bed, affection clear in his eyes watching her with their sons. Gently stroking two fingers over their downy hair, and she smiles softly, a tremor of tears at the corners of her mouth. She's so lucky to have this, to have gotten all this, her husband and their home and their sons.

" _I love you."_

Wanda jerks awake in a rough gasp for air, a hand falling to her belly, fingers tightening into the thin fabric of her shirt. Her breath comes in infrequent rasps, eyes burning with unshed tears, and she holds a hand to her mouth to quiet the sob that escapes. If anyone hears her, they'll come knocking on the door to comfort her, and she needs the time to herself, to shake off the mourning the dream has left behind, time to calm her frantic heart and stop the tears from falling. She's already spent too many hours crying.

Inching her door open silently, she pads down the stairs to the kitchen, pulling a glass down from a cupboard and letting icy cold water splash over her wrists and onto her clothes as she fills it. Every pinprick of cold on her skin reminds her that she's alive, makes her heart tick a beat faster, providing a welcome distraction from the implacable urge to let the darkness swallow her whole.

Her hand is still shaking, making the glass clack against her teeth as she drinks, and she drops her free hand to her stomach and tries to breathe slowly in and out, thinking about something other than the dream. The light in Vision's eyes, their baby in his arms, the perfect life that she'll never have. Not when he died before she even knew she was pregnant, when she's pregnant with a child who will never know their father, when she'll never get him back.

She stares at the drawings pinned to the fridge, Nathaniel's scribbles and the printed _MY FAMILY_ , Cooper's report card, Lila's painting. The pieces of the family that occupy this house, the place she's invading with nowhere else to go, and she touches her stomach again, her eyes prickling with tears. This is everything she wanted, everything her dreams keep trying to convince her she has, wedding photographs on the mantelpiece and toys scattered haphazardly through the living room. A contented family life that she can never have.

Filling another glass of water, she leans against the counter, dabbing the tears gathering in her eyes away and trying to swallow down the sadness when she hears a sound overhead. She can't let anyone catch her crying, snatching her hand away from her stomach. She has to wonder when she'll start to show, when she won't be able to hide this any longer, when everyone will have to know. She's pregnant with Vision's baby, and he's dead and her entire world has imploded. People celebrate that the Avengers returned the universe to what it was before Thanos, but she's lost after that split second of finally having revenge. Thanos is gone, but she didn't get Vision back.

She has to fight not to cry when Laura rounds the bottom of the stairs, trailing a sleepy-eyed Nathaniel, seeing herself in a few years, holding hands with a little boy with Vision's eyes. But her husband won't be sleeping upstairs, waiting to see her. She'll be alone. "Morning," Laura says softly, her eyes full of the kind of quiet sympathy that makes Wanda simultaneously want to break things and break down. "Nate, say morning to Auntie Wanda."

"Mornin'," Nathaniel says, in that tiny sweet voice, clutching his teddy bear in one chubby fist, and it takes all of her willpower not to cry looking at him, this child who was some light in the weeks after Sokovia, who carries her brother's name, who she held while Clint solemnly asked for her permission. She can remember the way Nathaniel's tiny face wrinkled when her tears fell on him, the warm weight of him in her arms, and she wonders whether her baby will feel the same. Imagines holding them for the first time, looking down at them, picking out the features that are hers and those that are Vision's. Only she won't be like Laura, with Clint hovering exhausted but proud to hold their child too. There won't be anyone to hold her hand through it all.

"It's awfully early to be awake," Laura says, pouring orange juice into a cup for Nathaniel and handing it to the toddler, and Wanda watches him cross the room to the couch and climb on, trailing his blanket across the floor. "Couldn't sleep?"

She's torn between lying to make everyone feel better and falling into Laura's arms, sobbing out everything that's leaving her unable to sleep. Swallowing thickly, she quietly says, "I just wanted to see the sun," and hopes that there won't be any more questions. Every word said to her pushes her closer to just admitting the truth.

"Well, you're not going to see it properly standing around the kitchen," Laura says, and turns to her son curled up to the arm of the couch. "Nate, why don't you go find your dad and ask him to make pancakes? I'm going for a walk with Auntie Wanda."

Before Wanda can so much as protest, Laura has lent her one of Clint's hoodies against the early morning chill and they're walking along the edge of the property, past the tree with the archery target mounted against it and the barn where the tractor is waiting. Pulling her hands back into her sleeves and ducking her head, she follows Laura until they reach the trees and the sound of the river, and she turns around already folding her arms over her chest, giving her a probing look. "So maybe you don't want to talk about anything sad in front of my three year old," she says, and Wanda drops her gaze, scared that the truth is spelt out in her eyes, "but we're friends. I care about you, Wanda."

"I really am okay," she says, forcing her voice to stay steady, to not trip over the lie. Maybe it was true at Tony's funeral, when she spoke to Clint and let herself give the tiniest of smiles when Sam slung an arm around her and offered her a sip of his drink. But any level of acceptance she'd managed to find fled when she was staring at the two tiny lines on that pregnancy test.

"I'm a mother of three, sweetie, I know when someone's lying," Laura says, and Wanda looks even further away, watching the pale light of the rising sun playing over the swirl of the water rushing down the river. "You know it's okay to not be okay, right? You don't have to be strong for anyone."

"I do." The words come out barely more than a breath, and Laura looks at her with so much sympathy in her gaze that Wanda can feel the tears prickling hotly behind her eyes, the lump rising in her throat.

"You don't have to hide it from the kids, you really don't," she says, and Wanda shakes her head wordlessly, trying to hold back her emotions. "I promise. Clint cried in front of them. Sam cried in front of them. Rhodey did too. And they're all worried about you. They just want to know you're okay."

"I'm _fine_ ," she insists, but the words come out jagged, jerking over the threat of a sob, and when Laura takes a sympathetic step closer she can't help the tears that spill over, burying her face in her hands and barely able to gather the breath to get out, "Something happened."

"You can tell us, sweetie," Laura says, gently curving her hand over Wanda's shoulder and squeezing reassuringly. "What's going on?"

"Laura, I...I...I'm..." She can't even speak, the word sticking like a shard of glass in her throat, and Laura just moves closer, a gentle maternal touch at Wanda's cheek, and she manages to whisper, "I'm _pregnant_ ," before she dissolves into tears, sagging into the arm Laura hastily puts around her.

A soft kiss to her forehead, and she buries her face in Laura's shoulder, muffling the sobs that seem to be coming from somewhere deep inside her, jerking her entire body with every sound. "Oh _sweetheart_ ," Laura breathes, and it only makes it all worse, makes her think that the arms wound tightly around her aren't the arms she wants. In another life, this would be a happy moment, telling Vision she's expecting their baby, watching his beautiful eyes light up and seeing his smile. But he's gone, and she's left alone with nothing but the pale glow of the child inside her to live for.

When her sobs have calmed, in time to the soothing rhythm of Laura rubbing her back into gentle circles, she lifts her head and tries to wipe her eyes with the rough edge of her sleeve. Laura gives her a tiny smile and says, "You're worse than the kids," handing her a proper tissue. Her gaze stays on Wanda while she tries to blot away the tears, and finally she says, "Do you know how far along you are?"

"How far along do you have to be for a cheap pregnancy test to be positive?" she asks quietly.

"You haven't seen a doctor?" Laura asks, and Wanda shakes her head. "I'll set an appointment up with mine."

"You don't have to-"

" _You_ have to take care of that baby," Laura says sternly, and Wanda curves a hand over her stomach. There's a slight curve finally coming into being beneath her clothes, the sign that she really is pregnant, her body changing. "How are you feeling?"

"I...um...I found out after Tony's funeral," she says, pressing both hands to her belly. Remembering it all, rushing from the gathering of friends wistfully reminiscing to lock herself in the bathroom, trying to hide from everyone, the slow realisation of what was going on the more she watched Nathaniel and Morgan running around in the garden. Trying to deny it, covering up that she couldn't get through the day without throwing up, and eventually breaking and smuggling a pregnancy test into the grocery run. Sitting alone in the spare room of the farmhouse, staring down as the two lines emerged into being, throwing the test against the wall and sobbing into her pillow.

"Does anyone know?" Laura asks, and she shakes her head. "Oh sweetheart, you've been dealing with all this _alone_? You didn't have to do that."

"I just...couldn't tell anyone," she says, and her voice is so small and sad. It barely sounds like hers. "I was scared. I just want them safe." She fans her fingers protectively over her stomach, that image of a little boy with Vision's eyes floating back to the forefront of her mind.

"You don't need to be scared, sweetheart," Laura reassures her softly, stroking her hair. "I know how big this is, believe me. But me and Clint are here for you. Everything's going to be okay."

"It doesn't feel like it will," she says quietly, clutching at her bump. Another sob forcing its way out of her throat. "I...it's _hard_."

"I know, sweetheart," Laura says, and pulls her into another hug, a kiss brushed to her temple. "I wish this were different. I really do. You should get to experience having your first baby when you can be happy about it. You should have someone to experience it with." Her eyes are distant and wistful, and Wanda blinks back the prickle of tears. Of course she wishes Vision could be with her, that she could see the wonder in his smile as he watches her belly grow with their baby, that he could be with her to feel the first kick, that she could forever remember him holding their child for the first time. But he can't, and it's something she just has to accept. The mind stone is gone, it's too dangerous to lead more threats towards Earth, and she just has to accept it.

"Laura?" she asks softly, and Laura steps away from her, looking concernedly into her eyes. "Will you help me tell people? Just...just Clint. For now." Sadness squeezes at her chest as she says, "I don't have anyone except you two."

"Of course I'll help you," Laura says, giving her a comforting smile. "If my little guy has done his job, hopefully Clint should be making breakfast. You can tell him today if you want?"

"Do you think I should?" she asks quietly, cradling her hands to her stomach. In no more than eight months, probably less, she'll be cradling a real baby.

"The sooner you tell people, the sooner we can all support you," Laura says. "And we will. You'll always have a place on the Barton farm if you need it. So will the baby."

Touching a hand briefly to her belly, Wanda can imagine her child in this place. Sharing the sunlight with Nathaniel, running over the grass, climbing on the tractor and sharing in the bright family life of the farmhouse. Maybe she could stay here with him, let Clint and Laura take care of her, hide herself away from the world. Maybe she could be some kind of happy. Even without Vision, maybe she could find a way. Even though her world seems to be collapsing around her now she has a baby but not him, maybe she can make a happy life for her child.

Laura leads her back to the farmhouse, the sound of family inside, and they find Cooper and Nathaniel staring each other down over the last of the syrup, Cooper holding his butter knife in a more than mildly threatening manner. "Coop, you are the oldest, Nate gets the syrup," Laura says warningly, and Nathaniel beams. A ghost of a smile flitting over her face, Wanda sits down next to Lila when she pats the chair with a little smile that reminds her of Clint, and pulls the jug of orange juice towards her.

Conversation over breakfast is kept light, never straying into what's happening beyond the land of the farm. They save that for when the children are in bed, sitting in the room talking about what comes next. About how hard Rhodey has been working to clean up the debris of the compound, about how Morgan is adjusting to life without her father, about how Thor has left the planet and whether they'll ever see him again.

Picking at the last of the pancakes that Clint insisted she have, Wanda catches Laura's eye across the table and gives her a small nod. Clearing her throat, Laura says, "Coop, will you go help your brother get dressed? Lila, go feed the chickens."

Grumbling, Cooper scoops up Nathaniel and Lila goes to grab the bucket of feed, and when the doors close behind the two children Clint's eyes switch to Wanda. "What's going on?" he asks, his eyes searching her face for an answer. "Is everything okay? Did you hear from someone?" She shakes her head, her fingers curling into fists around her skirt. Too scared to try to admit to what she knows she has to tell him. These are the people who care about her, Laura with her look of maternal concern, and Clint who came and held her when the rage and adrenaline of battle faded and she realised there was no way for her to get Vision back. "Wanda?"

"I...there's something I have to tell you," she says, and glances at Laura for the strength that a nod and a tiny encouraging smile can give her. "I..." She looks up, meets Clint's concerned eyes and finally manages to quietly say, "I'm pregnant."

Clint jerks onto his feet, and before she can breathe he's moved around the corner of the table to her and pulled her into a hug. And she relaxes into him, the softness of his shirt, and he's stroking her hair and holding her close. "It's okay," he whispers, and she clutches at him, relying on the soothing motion of his hand smoothing her hair to keep her calm, to keep the jagged sobs from rising. "Everything's going to be okay."

"I'll book an appointment with my ob-gyn for you," Laura says from the table, and Wanda lifts her head from Clint's shoulder, a glow of gratitude in her chest. "She helped with all three kids. Clint liked her, so you know she was worthy."

Looking into Clint's eyes at his touch to her chin, Wanda gives him a weak smile. "You're gonna be a great mom," he says softly, and she feels tears of gratitude prickling behind her eyes. "Have you been in touch with the father yet?"

It takes a moment for the words to sink in. For what he's implying to put its sharp point into Wanda's heart. Then she quietly asks, "What?"

"We'll help if you want him to be involved," Clint says, Laura nodding along in the background. "And if you don't, I think you should still tell him. It's important that he knows. In times like this, people probably wanna know about new life."

"Clint...the father...Vision's dead," she says, having to say it putting a heaviness in her chest, hot guilt prickling the back of her neck. But Clint is still staring at her with so much understanding in his gaze, his hands at her shoulders, and she's suddenly overcome by the urge to step back, move away.

"We all process grief differently," he says, soft and sympathetic. "No one would ever blame you for doing it. Or...or even if it wasn't grief. If it was...before." The implication hits Wanda with a sharp stab of horror, and she steps away from Clint, his hands still reaching for her. "No one blames you. But you should contact him and let him know. He might want to support you."

"It's _Vision's_ baby," she insists, and catches the look Clint and Laura give each other. "There's no one else. There's never been anyone else. It's _him_."

"Sweetie," Laura says, her voice carrying the high lilt of someone who thinks she's lying to it, and there are absurd tears prickling behind her eyes. "We know how you felt about him. But he couldn't conceive. He wasn't _human_. He can't be the father."

"But he _is_!" she insists. "There's no one else, and I'm pregnant, so it has to be him!"

"I know how hard this must be for you," Clint says, and she's shaking her head, she can feel the tears rising and the sobs fighting to escape, because the two people she trusts the most, the two people she trusts to take care of her, don't believe her. "But it's okay. You can tell us. We won't judge you, no matter what you did."

"I didn't do _anything_ ," she insists, the tears spilling over. "It's his baby, it's _Vision's_ , why would I _lie_ , I love him and I wanted this and now I have it but he's _dead_! Why won't you _believe me_?!" She manages to shriek out the last syllable before she collapses in on herself, sobbing, pressing her hands to her belly. The precious child inside her, Vision's child, the only thing she has left of him, and they refuse to believe that it's his.

Then Laura has an arm around her, and her voice is soothing when she says, "Don't cry. We believe you. It's okay, just calm down. This isn't good for the baby." But even with an arm around her, Wanda still notices the tiny glances between husband and wife. She still knows that they don't believe her.

* * *

The small panel by the door lights up red with a proximity warning, and Wanda looks up from the yellowing pages of _What To Expect When You're Expecting_ to hear the whine of a quinjet coming in to land. Lila comes running in from the garden, arrows still clutched in her fist, shouting, "Dad! It's the compound quinjet! It's probably Rhodey!"

Clint appears from behind the kitchen door, mixing bowl in his hands and Nathaniel with sticky fingers behind him, and says, "Go say hi to him, then. You're the official representative of Hawkeye, Lil."

Wanda leverages herself up out of the armchair, marking her place in the book and sliding it into its hiding place under the coffee table. She still hasn't told the children that she's pregnant, is hiding the rounding of her belly beneath baggy clothes despite the burgeoning summer heat, and she has to pull back the urge to press a hand to her bump. Lila isn't stupid enough to ignore a sign like that, and she can't bear the thought of the childish curiosity, all the questions that she doesn't want to answer.

Tugging at the heavy fabric of her sweater, she follows Lila out into the garden, grass whispering against her bare feet. The quinjet lands and Wanda watches Lila grin and throw herself into Rhodey's arms with a wistfulness staining her smile. Even if she knows that Lila is angling for a spot on the Avengers, or at least a slot to train with them, it's sweet to watch the way Rhodey's tired face brightens. He looks the same when he can interact with Morgan, with any children in this brave new world. She sees hope in his face when he sees them, and she wonders if telling him that she's pregnant will make him smile like that.

Lila's shriek of excitement when Sam ducks out of the quinjet echoes across the expanse of the farm, and Wanda wants to copy the young girl and run into his arms. She hasn't forgotten his support, the way he held her while she sobbed on the battlefield, his hand hovering at her back during the funeral, his constant offers to let her move in with him for a while.

She manages to restrain herself to stay by the house, and Rhodey gives her a nod and a smile. "How you holding up, Red?" he asks, and she shrugs. He lets out a breath of something like a laugh and says, "I get that."

"Clint's creating in the kitchen with Nate," she says, and Rhodey reaches over to squeeze her shoulder as he passes, making her flinch. Only when the door swings shut over the sounds of Clint calling out his greeting does Wanda go to Sam, his warm embrace, tucking her face into the crook of his neck and inhaling the scent of the compound's fabric softener, that sweet scent that used to cling to Vision.

Tears prickle at the corners of her eyes, and Sam lifts her chin, his eyes searching her face in concern. "Lila, can you give me a second alone with your Aunt Wanda?" he asks. "Go see if Clint still has that bag of ginger tea I stashed here and make me one, will you?"

"I'm not your servant," Lila says, folding her arms stubbornly across her chest, and Sam cocks an eyebrow.

"I'll teach you how to throw my shield if you go make me and Wanda tea," he says, and Lila's eyes light up. "You can use your discretion about whether or not to make one for your parents or Rhodey."

"Wanda isn't drinking tea right now," Lila says, and Wanda winces at the instantly suspicious look Sam gives her. "Do you want the no caffeine one, Auntie Wanda?"

"That would be nice," she says vaguely, and Lila is running back up to the house. Wanda turns her gaze on Sam and says, "Clint's going to kill you for promising to train her. He keeps telling her she's too young to be an Avenger."

"No harm in starting the next generation of superheroes early," Sam says, and she wonders if she's imagining it or if his gaze flickers down to her stomach. "Do you need to sit down while we talk?"

"I'm fine," she insists, and stares at him flatly. "And you know full well what's happening if you're asking me that." Her voice thins out when she says, "Is my _condition_ too delicate to be allowed to stand up for more than a minute at a time?"

"You're pregnant." He says it as a flat statement, no question about it, and she presses her hand to her bump, protecting the tiny flickering lives inside her. "Does Clint know?"

"He does," she says quietly. It still stings, the offers of support and having baby books pressed into her hands and the promises that she can have Nathaniel's old crib, all the while Clint and Laura refusing to believe that she's carrying Vision's children. "He...him and Laura, they...they're helping me."

"Are they?" Sam asks, so boldly that it makes her start. "Because you're tearing up trying to tell me they are." She presses a hand to her mouth to catch the sob that wants to escape, and Sam's arm is around her, pulling her into him. "It's okay," he breathes into her hair, and she digs the fingers of her trapped hand into her bump. "I know I'm not the guy you _want_ to be hugging you-"

"They don't believe me," she whispers, and he pulls back from holding her.

"That you're pregnant? Because there's a very simple way to prove that...are you telling me you haven't even seen a _doctor_ yet-"

"I saw a doctor last week," she bites back, and Sam's mouth snaps shut. "It...I'm having twins." The words taste sour with grief on her lips, ruined by the memory of telling the benignly smiling doctor that the gene came from her, that her own twin was long dead, that the father of her own children won't be around to hold either. "They don't believe that they're... _his_ children." She swallows thickly and breathes, "Vision's. They think I...I slept with someone. Grieving, or that I...I _cheated_ on him." Tears spring hot to her eyes and she whimpers, "I would _never_ have done that, I...I _loved_ him."

"I know," Sam says gently. "They're just...they never saw the two of you together, Wanda. For all they know, it was just a...silly little fling. I'm sorry that I'm the only one still here who knows better." There's a silent moment of mourning that passes between them, an aching gap where Natasha and Steve used to be. Then he sighs and says, "C'mere, Red."

He holds her for a long moment of silence but for her sniffling, until she pulls herself together, wiping her eyes with her sleeves. Sam gives her a careful look and asks, "Is it an appropriate situation for me to say congratulations?" She squeaks out something like a laugh, and he grins, pulling a slightly fluffy tissue from his pocket with a flourish. "Come on, let's get you back up to a seat. You shouldn't be standing up for so long in your condition."

She shoves at him, but lets him guide her back up to the house. Lila proudly presents them each with a cup of tea, giggling when Sam's eyes light on Rhodey holding one too and he gasps, "Traitor!"

"How's the construction, Rhodey?" Clint asks, as Wanda folds herself into the armchair with a slight squirm to adjust herself. Sam casts her a concerned look, but Rhodey is much too distracted stirring sugar into his coffee to notice the way her sweater twists briefly over the slight swell of her belly before she tugs it away.

"Getting there," Rhodey says. "Lucky for us that there was another place to set up as a base. It's a little outdated, but between Bruce and Shuri the tech is almost fixed up. At least we have grounds and space and everyone has a room to call their own. And we've still got someone to fix up the tech." He snaps his fingers suddenly and says, "That reminds me - Shuri's gonna come by sometime this week and set you guys up with some equipment so we can all stay in touch. Way more efficient than phones."

"And how's Carol?" Clint asks, giving Rhodey a pointed look that Wanda can't help reading into, glancing curiously at Rhodey's face. "She helping you?"

"She's gone to check on some friends, but she'll try to come back for the grand opening of the new Avengers facility," he says. Wanda wonders briefly why Clint's grin slants so teasingly, but then Rhodey turns his gaze to her and asks, "Everything okay, kid?"

"I'm better," she says softly. Talking around the point, studiously avoiding Sam's gaze, not wanting to get into it in front of Clint's children. "I've been better. But I'm better than...I was." Not that she could be much worse than the screaming sobs on the battlefield, the searching in every direction for a hint that Vision had come back like everyone else, Sam burying her face in his chest while she screamed that it wasn't fair.

"Happy to hear you're okay, Red," he says with a small smile. "You adjusting to life back out here?"

"It's peaceful," she says, looking past Rhodey and out to the garden. The green of the grass and the blue of the sky and the sound of the water.

"Gonna be quite the adjustment coming back to the Avengers after you've been up here all this time," he says. And it's easy to forget how long she's been here - but it's almost fourteen weeks. Fourteen weeks since she had to try to accept that she couldn't ask for Vision back. That doing it would be selfish. "I've already got Scott training. Keeps bringing his daughter around so she can drop hints about wanting to be on the team too."

"Rhodey, I...I don't know if I'm coming back," she says softly, and Rhodey's face falls. "I, um...things are different now."

"Lila." Clint's voice sounds through the room, kind but authoritative. "Why don't you take Nate upstairs? We need to talk as adults." Seemingly not oblivious to the sudden tension crackling through the room, Lila leaves immediately, and Rhodey's piercing gaze turns to Wanda.

"I know it's gonna be hard to go back," he says. "It doesn't feel the same without Nat, or Vision, or..." He swallows thickly and forces out, "Or Tony." He takes a moment to compose himself then says, "But we're the Avengers. This job is never gonna be done. I know you can still be a hero, Wanda."

"It's not that I don't want to, it's..." She trails off, chews at the inside of her cheek, and drops a hand to her belly. Watches Rhodey's gaze drop to her bump, his eyes widen, and she has to take a steadying breath in before she says, "I'm pregnant, Rhodey."

Rhodey stares at her in a long silence, before he sucks in a breath and says, "Okay." He looks to Clint, to Sam, and asks, "How far along are you?"

"Fourteen weeks," she says, cupping a protective hand to her bump. "I found out a few weeks ago that it...it's twins." She straightens up, tries to feel the way she did on the battlefield, in control, and says, "So it's not just my life I have to think about anymore. There's three of us in this now."

"Clint, Laura, Sam, you mind if I talk to Wanda alone?" Rhodey asks, and at a nod from her the three leave the room, and she's alone with the new leader of the Avengers. And he's staring at her running her thumb back and forth over her belly, and finally saying, "There's still a place for you in the team. We can work out some sort of maternity leave arrangement. And childcare!"

"It's not about that, Rhodey, it's...It's the principle of parenting," she says, and holds herself tighter, imagining the faces of her children, her _twins_ , imagining their eyes like Vision's. "My kids, they...they already have one parent who isn't coming back from the fight-"

"They're _Vision's_?" Rhodey asks, and she squints at him, nodding. Not him too. She can't cope with Clint and Laura not believing her, never mind Rhodey. Not when he saw the way they danced around each other, that slow progression from nervous friends to something more, when he watched Vision die at her hands. "Wanda, that...it's crazy, how could he-"

"How could I almost kill Thanos just by thinking it?" she asks thinly, and Rhodey wisely shuts his mouth. "Rhodey, they already lost their _father_. They'll never have a chance to know him. I can't...if I stay on the team, I'm risking my life every single day. And I can't put them through that. I don't want to."

"We can be more careful," he says, and she shakes her head. "There aren't gonna be big threats for a while. Maybe never again. Maybe Thanos was the worst we'll ever have to deal with. Now we can go back to busting arms dealers and tracking shady people and maybe the worst any of us get is shot in the shoulder. No more having to turn back the end of the world."

"I don't care if the risk is smaller now," she says, a sharpness in her voice. "I don't want any risk. I can't...I don't want this anymore." There are sudden tears in her eyes and a band around her throat when she says, "Vizh wanted a quiet life. He wanted us to leave together and make a home somewhere. And...now he doesn't get to have that. But I can have it. I owe it to him to give his children the life he wanted."

"Maybe if you just got in touch with the father...then you could-"

"Their father is _Vision_ , and he's _dead_!" she snaps, tears springing to her eyes. "Rhodey, for God's sake, if you could believe everything else we've been through but not _this_ -"

"Okay, okay, I surrender," Rhodey says, hands spread at his sides. "So...you really want this?"

"What choice do I have?" she asks hopelessly. "I can't stay. If I die in the field, my children will grow up without their parents. I know what that does to someone. I'd never wish it on anyone."

"There's always another choice," Rhodey says quietly. "You don't...there are options other than raising the twins."

"I know there are," she says. "But I don't want any of them. I want my babies. I want _Vision's_ babies. I want them with me, I want to be their mom, and I want to raise them in a world that feels safe."

"It's safer with you fighting for it," Rhodey says, and she sighs softly.

"And maybe I'll change my mind one day," she says. "Maybe I'll get bored being a mom and wanna start fighting again." She meets his eyes and says, "But I've lost everything trying to be a hero. Now I've found something special again, and I'm not losing it for the sake of being on the team." When she blinks a tear spills hot down her cheek, and she forces out, "I just want _peace_."

She buries her face in her hands, and vaguely hears Rhodey softly say, "I'm gonna get Sam, okay?" She only knows him by the smell of leather, his arms curving over her shoulder, and she leans into him, arm draped over her belly, sobs breaking past her lips despite her attempts to swallow them back.

"I know it doesn't mean much to you for us to say things, because you were his girlfriend," Sam says softly, and she hiccups out a sob against his shirt, "but we all miss him too. _I_ miss him."

"I wasn't his girlfriend." It comes out in dull, monotonous rush of words, and Sam laughs under his breath.

"Pretty sure you were even if you were never _official_ , or whatever the kids say now-"

"Not a kid-"

"I'm practically old enough to be your father-"

"You're thirty-five, I'm twenty-three - were you out there fathering children when you were twelve?"

"Need I point out that your baby daddy was three years old?" he asks, and she shakes her head hopelessly. "I've been in a good few relationships in my time, and I'm pretty sure sneaking around to see each other for two years makes you in one." She pulls her head away from being buried in his chest, and his gaze on her his soft as he says, "You loved him. Right?"

"Of course I did." She twists her fingers anxiously together, memories flipping bright and burnished through her mind, clutching at her bump, these precious pieces of Vision that she still has. "He was everything."

"That sure as hell sounds like something his girlfriend would say," Sam says, and it takes her a moment to rein in control of her emotions, to not collapse back into his arms. "We all lost something." His eyes gleam with unshed tears, and she winces at making him think about Steve, the loss he's taken so hard, pretending that everything is alright for everyone else's sake. "But you lost him. And now you're having his kids, and that's great - but I can only imagine how hard it is to know he'll never meet them."

"It's pretty hard," she says, the words too hollow to describe how much it really weighs on her, how a part of her heart splinters away every time she feels the slightest spark of excitement to meet her children and knows they'll never meet their father. Every time she dreams of him and wakes with tears in her eyes, the fantasy of a life she could've had slipping away like water through cupped fingers.

"Well, we're all here for you," he says, with a comforting squeeze of her shoulder. "Assuming...it's okay to tell people? If it's not, I can keep a secret."

"I..." She looks at him, down at the swell of her belly, and says, "You can tell the team. Just the team. I don't want parties or cards or presents, but...they should know. They should know why I'm not coming back."

"They'll be happy for you," he says softly, stroking her hair. "Seriously. We were worried..." He trails away, and she looks up at him, blinking the haze of tears out of her eyes as he bites his lip. "We were really worried. Terrified, really. That you'd...give up."

"I thought about it," she admits quietly. A horrible thought that haunted her in the middle of the night, when nightmares of watching Vision die woke her or she hadn't been able to sleep at all. The nights that she sat up in bed, digging her nails into her palms and refusing to think about the knives in the kitchen. "I...there were nights I almost did."

"What changed?" Sam asks, and he's so gentle, so understanding. It's different to when Pietro died - at least then she had purpose, had Vision's shy overtures of friendship, had her hope that she would make up for everything she'd done wrong. What does she have now?

She presses a hand to her bump and says, "I found out I was pregnant." Sam's face softens into a smile, and she feels the shadow of one cross her own face, rubbing a small circle over her belly. "And I...I don't know. I can't explain it. I was...devastated. That he won't get to see them. That they'll spend their entire lives with nothing of their father but photographs and stories. But I...I'm _happy_." Tears prickle her eyes, and she blinks them desperately away, determined not to cry again. "I wanted his children so badly. There was once...about six months after we started, I thought...I thought maybe I was pregnant. I wasn't, obviously. But I remember seeing that the test was negative and being so disappointed. God, it was the first time I admitted to myself that I wanted so much more than a fling with him."

"That much was obvious from the start, Wanda," Sam says, a hint of teasing in his voice, and she shakes her head. "So...you're gonna be a mom. You're definitely keeping them?"

"I have to," she says. "And I know...maybe it's selfish. I'm probably in no position to be raising one baby, let alone two. But I can't...I just can't give them up." She blinks away fresh tears and says, "I'm never gonna love someone like I loved Vision. They're all I have left of him. I just...I wanna be their mom. Who else is going to make sure they know their father?"

"I will," he says, and brushes a kiss to her forehead when she chokes out a sob. "Uncle Sam is on the case. They won't go a day without me telling them some dumb story about when we all figured out Vision liked you."

"When did you figure that out?" she asks, and he arches an eyebrow.

"Well, he kept staring at your boobs every time you wore something low-cut..."

"Maybe don't tell my children that one," she says faintly, and he laughs. Then his face goes suddenly serious, shadowed, and she straightens up, pressing a hand to her belly. "Sam?"

"Christ, I almost forgot I had something else to tell you," he says, and a chill slips down her spine. "Look, I know you know Rhodey and I were trying to arrange to have Vision flown back here and buried where we could all visit him from time to time. But...they said no. We appealed to everyone we could think of that owes us a favour. They won't agree to someone who wasn't an American citizen being buried here."

" _What_?" It breaks out of her in a choked fragment, half caught in a sob, her fingers curled into her bump. "But...he _died_ to save everyone in this stupid selfish country!"

"I know," Sam says soothingly. "It's bullshit, and it's disgustingly unfair. So we...Rhodey and I appealed to friends. T'Challa will let him be buried in Wakanda. We've set up for as many people as possible to fly out there in a week for a memorial." He looks down at her and gently asks, "Unless you want to give it a little longer. But then we can't wait too long, can we, because of the babies."

"Next week is fine," she says, her voice dull and sad. "I...will I be expected to speak?"

"You don't have to do anything you don't want to," Sam reassures her gently. "You can just stand there silently if that's what you want. I think I might want to say a few words, if that's alright with you. But otherwise all we'll do is lay him to rest."

"Sam?" He takes one look at her expression and sinks to his knees beside her, taking her hand. "I...the more I think about it, the more I...I realise that I can't stay here."

"Here, in this house?" he asks. "Because the compound is always open, and I'm thinking about moving in there permanently and giving up my place in Brooklyn. It's definitely not built for two toddlers but maybe while they're just babies you could-"

"No," she says, and his mouth snaps shut. "Here, in the US." She tucks her hair behind her ears, and tries not to be upset by Sam's stricken expression. "The...Vision being buried here would be the only reason to stay. If he won't be, I...I don't see the point of staying here."

"There are people who love you here," Sam says instantly, and she knew he'd say it. It's the thing she's told herself, sitting up at night debating the reality of her decision. "You have a support network. I'll help you raise those babies single-handedly." Then he blinks at her, and slowly asks, "Where would you go?"

"Sokovia." No hesitation. She's made her decision. "It's so much safer there now than it was when I was growing up. There's nothing in the US for me, so I...I wanna raise my babies where I grew up. Show them all the places I used to go, the river and the market and the woods. I've looked into it." She casts her eyes away from his and admits, "I could get a three bedroom house there for the same price as some apartments here. And...I'll always be able to come back and visit. Or people can come visit me. I just...I need to be away." She looks at him with wide, pleading eyes and asks, "Will you help me?"

And he sighs. "I guess I owe it to my friend's memory to help his baby mama be happy."


	2. even if you cannot hear my voice

**A/N:** Thank you so much for the lovely feedback on the last chapter. I've put the chapter counter up - there's just a lot of story to tell and I don't imagine anyone wants 20K chapters! Hope you all enjoy, I'm on tumblr and twitter @mximoffromanoff if people want to chat :)

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There's rainclouds over Wakanda. She'd somehow never pictured it being a place where it could rain, but standing in the palace she's watching the first drops start to fall across the rolling sea of grass. Looking down to the woods, the river winding lazily through the land, everything so beautifully tranquil. She blinks, and sees it blocked out by the battle, hears the screaming and explosions, and stumbles back from the window, a faint sour taste of nausea at the back of her throat and her hand pressed to her bump.

The sound of her heels on the floor echoes in the silent white corridors, and she wonders how she must look to the white-clothed guards drifting past. A wraith in her long-sleeved black dress, the skirt swirling to rest over the curve of her belly, her hair drawn back from knife-sharp cheekbones. Laura's doctor told her sternly that she has to gain back some of the weight she lost so quickly in the initial days after the fight, that she is below her ideal weight and that weighs her pregnancy with extra risk, and she forces herself to take something from the table set up in the room where everyone has gathered.

She looks around at the knot of people, most of whom she hasn't seen since Tony's funeral. There aren't as many, with the Guardians having returned to space and taken Thor with them. The world hasn't stopped just for her grief. But there are people who've turned out for Vision, even people who never met him, people who spoke to him perhaps once in the three short years he lived. Carol is having a hushed conversation with Rhodey and T'Challa in the corner of the room, Peter tugging at the collar of his shirt and nodding while Scott talks at him, clearly trying to make him comfortable. Hope is talking to Okoye and a teenage girl who must be Scott's daughter, Bucky silently sitting in an armchair, and Pepper is sparing the occasional glance away from her conversation with Happy to give Wanda a sympathetic smile. Morgan is buried in her mother's skirts, wearing the same black dress from her father's funeral, and Wanda clutches a hand to her bump and turns away, a hand at her mouth, her head suddenly light.

"Hey," comes that warm, reassuring whisper, and Sam's arm is around her. "I've got you." He steadies her, letting her cling to him, and he gives her a stern look and asks, "Have you eaten today?"

"You brought me oatmeal this morning, remember?"

"Yes, but did you _actually_ eat it?" he asks pointedly, and she nods vaguely. "You're an awful liar. Eat some of those tiny sandwiches."

"I'm never telling you what the doctor told me to do again," she says, and he just arches an eyebrow at her. "Fine, fine, I'm doing it."

"I'll get you water too," he says, and she rolls her eyes. "Wanda, come on. Take your health seriously right now. It's important."

"It's also the love of my life's _funeral_ ," she hisses sharply, and tears sting her eyes. She sees Clint looking at her, letting go of Laura's hands and leaving their children to move towards her, and shakes her head. "I need air."

"Shuri wants to see you in the labs," Sam says, and she turns on her heel and walks away, trying to wipe tears away as they spill over and avoid smudging her make-up. A tiny concern, one she can control.

The labs are the same bright white she remembers, and when she casts her eyes around the room she can see Vision there, lying calmly on that bench and letting Shuri try to save him. Shuri is standing at the window, her arms folded over the black of her dress, sleeves rippling to the ground, and she turns at the first tap of Wanda's shoes on the white floors, only for her face to fall and turn back towards the window. "Sam said you wanted to talk to me," she says, and Shuri nods.

"So...when I got back here after that big fight, the place was trashed," she says. "Other techs had been using it for five years, and they'd gotten my system all out of order. So I had a massive clear-out and rearranged everything and I...I found something I'd forgotten about." Her hand disappears into a pocket and emerges with a small blue box. She turns fully to face Wanda, her face a mask of sympathy, and holds it nervously out. "Vision gave me this before we started the experiments with him. He told me...he told me if anything went wrong, I had to give this to you." She winces when Wanda lets out a splintered sob, but still continues, "He said I had to tell you that he loved you. And he was sorry." Wanda stumbles back against the nearest support, tears streaming down her face in trails shadowed grey with eyeliner, and Shuri winces. "I can...we can pretend you never even saw it."

"No!" she protests through a sob. "Let me see." She takes the box, weighing it carefully in her hand, and looks at Shuri. "Do you know what it is?"

"No," she says. "I never looked. It...it seemed like something for your eyes only."

Wanda opens the box in one flick of her hand, and the sob that comes out of her feels like it takes half her soul with it, her chest aching as her heart splinters into glass. There's a ring staring back at her, resting in the groove of a dark velvet cushion. A simple braided gold band set with a pretty red jewel, one that matches the necklace he gave her for their last Valentine's Day together, the necklace she reaches up to clutch at. A _ring_.

It's a _promise_. The ring itself is a promise, a promise to always love someone, a promise to be by their side no matter what, a promise to stay with them. A promise to _marry them_. And he bought her a ring, he kept it with him, he must have had it in Edinburgh when he gave her that soft look and asked her to stay, and he wanted to marry her, he wanted to make that promise he would never leave her, he wanted them to have a life together that could end in a wedding, he wanted to be her husband.

She can't see for tears, falling thick and fast, blurring the world into a haze of grief. They could've had forever, and yet she's alone, holding the beginnings of her bump, pregnant with his children and clutching the engagement ring he intended for her to her chest, her sobs cracked and audible and ruined. He could've proposed, she would've said yes, she always would have. And they could've gotten married, been happy, had a home and a family and stability. All the things she ever dreamed of, everything Vision made her believe she could have, and it's all torn away from her.

Seeing this ring should've been the happiest moment of her life. Seeing him on one knee, offering her everything, offering her his heart forever, falling to her knees to kiss him over and over again, murmured promises against each other's skin. She should've been crying tears of joy, not propping herself up on Shuri's beeping equipment while she sobs, thinking of him giving this to her while no one was looking, of Vision facing death and still wanting to be sure she would know how much he loved her.

"Did you talk about it?" Shuri asks, and Wanda looks up at her, barely able to see her through her tears. "Getting married?" Wanda shakes her head, clutching the ring, and Shuri asks, "Did you want to?"

"I love him so much," she sobs, and Shuri seems to decide there's no conversation. She walks out of the room, and Wanda is left alone, pulling the ring gently from the cushion and tilting it to watch the jewel catch the light. Sliding it onto her trembling finger, the metal cool against her skin. It fits perfectly.

"My fiancé," she whispers, testing the words out. They feel right, and she looks down at the ring, the red jewel bright against her pale skin. Against her black dress, the funeral dress, and she cups her left hand to her belly. "He loved me," she whispers, and wonders if her children will hear her, if they'll understand. "We would've gotten married one day. I want you to know that." She runs a wistful finger over her bump and breathes, "Your parents loved each other. We just...ran out of time."

She takes a moment to breathe, finds a reflective surface and dabs away the tearstains on her cheeks. Then she returns to the group, keeping her hand on her bump, the ring facing outward. She sees eyes fall to it, flicker to her face then back again, but no one asks questions. Sam silently returns to her side, puts an arm around her, and she leans against him. Accepts the plate of sandwiches and chews one, even though it tastes like sand in her mouth. Her glass clacks against her teeth in her shaking hand when she takes a sip of water, but she can gather herself. She can be strong for her children.

The spot they're going to bury Vision is hidden behind the palace, beneath a collection of trees. It's quiet, and perfect, and Wanda kneels by the gravestone. Traces her fingers over the lettering, the words she chose. _VISION. 2015-2018. MORE HUMAN THAN MOST._ Rain whispers over her skin, sinking into her hair, and she stands up against Sam's support, holding an umbrella over both of them while she looks at the small crowd. The people waiting for someone to say something. For _her_ to say something.

"I love you," she whispers, wishing that he could hear her. Wishing she'd said it when they still had time. "I won't forget you. I won't let anyone forget you." She blinks tears away and fiercely whispers, "I won't let our children grow up not knowing who you were."

In another life, she throws herself at his grave, screaming and sobbing. In another life, it's her funeral, she didn't try to keep going in a world without him. Maybe, somewhere in another world, this is her funeral, and he's in her place. But in this world, Sam has an arm around her, rain falling in a waterfall over the edges of the umbrella, and she tucks her hand over her bump to centre herself. She still has something of him, something to live for, something to force the world to remember him. She can think of holding her babies when the days seem dark and hopeless, imagine how she'll frame the story of how she fell in love with their father to her children. She can show them the ring and explain how the life they wanted together was just tragically out of reach.

"Does anyone else want to speak?" Sam asks, looking around the knot of people. No one says anything, and he clears his throat. "I want to say a few words, if no one minds. Then we can go back to the tiny sandwiches." A faint chuckle, and Sam adjust his grip on the umbrella, his arm wrapping tighter around Wanda. "You died a hero, buddy. We'll always remember what you did for us. I wish you'd gotten to be in that last big fight with us. I looked for you, but you...you weren't there." Wanda blinks hot tears out of her eyes, and Sam turns his head to press a soothing kiss to her temple. "You were a great guy. I'll never forget you pissing Tony off by putting coffee grounds in the disposal." There's a ripple of laughter, a nostalgic mist in Rhodey's eyes, and Wanda cracks a small smile. "I remember listening to you play piano at night. I remember that awful meal you made for us that you said was supposed to be bolognese but God knows what it actually was."

When the faint chuckling fades, Sam's face turns solemn and he says, "I'll remember how hard you tried to be human. But you didn't need to try, Vision. You were already more human than most of us." She hears the hitch in his voice when he says, "You won't be around to see them, but your kids are gonna grow up amazing. They'll get that from you." He squeezes Wanda's shoulder and adds, "And their mom, obviously." He lowers his voice enough that only Wanda can hear when he promises, "I'll take care of her, big guy."

Wanda turns her face into his chest, her eyes wet and her breath coming in uneven rasps, and he just holds her. Beneath the sound of the rain on the umbrella, they stand in quiet mourning, and when she next lifts her head people are shifting, heading back inside. She watches Rhodey touch the headstone before he walks away, Shuri bend down in her extravagant dress to lay a lily over the grave, and gives each of them a nod. The gesture means the world to her.

"I can already feel the bump digging in when you hug me," Sam says, and she leans back and gives him a small shadow of a smile. "Is this the reality of you having twins?"

"First pregnancy, carrying twins, already thin," she says, and his face falls into concern. "I have all the right factors for starting to show early."

"I'm really trying to resist dragging you to Brooklyn and feeding you up," Sam says, and she just shakes her head at him. "You want a moment alone?"

"I'm okay," she says, and lets him guide her back into the palace, lets him press a plate into her hands and folds herself into an armchair to eat. She can feel people's eyes resting on her, gazes on her bump and her ring and her tear-streaked face, but she tries not to be irritated by the concern. They're here because they're worried, here to pay tribute to Vision too. They understand his sacrifice. The sacrifice now explicit in the ring on her finger and the babies in her belly.

"Ms. Maximoff." She looks up to find Doctor Strange looking down at her, looking somehow smaller without his cloak, in the simple black suit of any ordinary man at a funeral. "Please allow me to express my sincere condolences for you loss. I never met him, but I understand Vision was an extraordinary man."

"Thank you," she says softly. "He was."

"It's also my understanding that you are having trouble understanding exactly how you conceived his children," he says, and she returns her gaze to her lap. "I don't mean to interfere, and if you don't want this I won't ask again, but I may be able to offer help. Through my magic, I may be able to understand how this has come to be."

"And if I don't want to know?" she asks. "They're my miracles. What if I just want to keep it that way? I know they're his children."

"I would never doubt that they are," Strange says, and she almost laughs at how absurd it is that a man she's exchanged perhaps two minutes of conversation with believes her when Clint and Laura still don't. "But if you are planning on leaving the US and the support of other superheroes, it would perhaps be useful to be able to explain to other doctors how you came to be pregnant. And I might be able to see whether your children might be born with powers. The potential of children carried by a woman with an infinity stone running through her, their father given life by the same stone, is infinite."

"I don't want them to have powers," she says faintly. "I don't want them to ever have to deal with...this." She gestures vaguely at the room, the wake, the quiet conversations over plates of sandwiches. "Losing people."

"Everyone loses people," Strange says solemnly. "It's better for you to be prepared for that potential. I would guess that it will be unlikely that your children don't have at least some sort of power."

"Are you even an obstetrician?" she asks, and he smiles slightly. "I've heard of the great neurologist Stephen Strange."

"The time stone will still allow me to understand the connection of your children to magic like the stones," he says, and she puts a protective hand over her belly. "Would you like to know?"

"How are you going to examine me here?" she asks, and he glances across the room at Shuri. "Oh...the lab." She glances down at the curve of her bump, imagining her children, seeing the potential future of their powers. Strange is right. She should be prepared.

She follows Strange to the lab, pulling her skirt down when she lies back on the table. She's becoming increasingly aware of her bump when she lies down, looking down at the curve, trying to resist the urge to run her hands over it. She wants to constantly know that it's real, that she's pregnant, that Vision's children are growing inside her. She wants to feel them there, waiting for the day when they can kick, when she can know they're alright. That everything is alright. Everything _has_ to be alright.

"What are you doing?" she asks Strange, and the sorcerer just gives her a slight slant of a smile. "What are you looking for?"

"You can feel the connection with any sorcerer," he says, and she wonders if that is what she is. A _sorcerer_. A wielder of magic the world doesn't understand. Magic she's leaving behind for the sake of her children, her family, a peaceful life. "The magic in them. I can feel it from you. Yours is some of the strongest magic I've ever felt." He gives her a pointed look and says, "Your children will have it too."

"You can tell that?" she asks, and he nods solemnly. "Can you see...other things? Do you know how this happened? Can you see the future?"

"I see many futures at once," he says, and his eyes are far-away, and she stares. She wonders what it would be like to see all of that, to know every possible outcome for every tiny decision. She imagines seeing a reality where maybe she didn't lose Vision, and shivers. She'd rather not know. "I do not know which one is yours, Ms. Maximoff. I can't tell you what they will look like or what to name them, if that's your question." He meets her eyes and says, "But in every future, they are powerful. And in every future, they have their father's eyes."

Tears immediately prickle behind her eyes, a lump in her throat, and she presses a hand to her bump. "Good," she whispers, high-pitched through a fragment of a sob. "I want them to have a piece of him. He...he had beautiful eyes."

Strange's gaze is somewhere in the past, glazed and distant, and he says, "I saw millions of futures. I analysed every way that we could hope to fight Thanos. This...this world, these sacrifices, were the only way that we could win." He looks at her, and she wonders what he sees. Reaches out and sees herself through his eyes, his mind. A scared young woman, eyes filled with tears, funeral dress pulling taut over a pregnant belly. Lost and alone and desperate. "But I am sorry that you had to lose so much for that victory."

"Everyone lost someone," she says, and Strange nods sagely.

"But you have lost the future you dreamed for yourself," he says, and she exhales sharply, bowing her head. "And I know firsthand that that is a terrible thing to lose."

She soon separates herself from Strange, returning to Sam's look of concern, his relief when she gives him a slight nod that everything is fine. She can't stop thinking of the future, all the millions of possibilities of how her children will turn out. She pictures them, two boys, two girls, a boy and a girl, with an array of powers between them and so many choices for what their lives could turn out to be. But in every future, she'll see Vision's eyes gazing back from her children's faces. That perfect summer sky blue. Her children will look like their father.

"Excuse me?" She blinks the futures away from her eyes and finds Morgan staring up at her, dark eyes huge in her tiny face. She's struck by how much she looks like Tony, and slowly crouches down to Morgan's level. "Mommy says you're gonna have _two_ babies."

"I am," Wanda says, and Morgan stares at her stomach. "That's what twins means. Two babies."

Morgan stares for a little longer, glances up at Pepper, and finally asks, "How do they _fit_?"

Wanda snorts out a laugh at the unexpected question, and Pepper is smiling down at her daughter, while Morgan just stares. "I don't know," Wanda says. "How do you think you fit?"

"Mommy says I didn't," Morgan says. "She says I made her very sick. She says Daddy..." Her tiny voice trails away into silence, and she's very quiet when she says, "She says Daddy had to do everything for her. Who's going to do everything for you?"

"I think Sam is," Wanda says faintly, and watches Morgan's face fall, her eyes shadowed. She recognises that look, she saw it on herself when her own parents died. She's seen it in the mirror too many times in her life. "Can I ask you a question, Morgan?" She nods, and Wanda asks, "Do you have a middle name?"

"Maria," Morgan says, and looks up at Pepper, and Wanda sees the sadness in her eyes. "After my granny. She died before I was born." She eyes Wanda suspiciously and asks, "Do you have one?"

"Magdalena," Wanda says, and a small smile tugs at the corners of Morgan's mouth.

"That's pretty," she says, small voice so sweet.

"Thank you," Wanda says softly, and Morgan smiles at her. "I want to give my babies middle names like me. And if...if I have a boy, would it be alright with you if I...if I wanted to give him Anthony as a middle name?"

Pepper lets out a sob, and Morgan frowns. "Like...my daddy?" Wanda nods, and the little girl ponders for a moment. "Yes. I think that would be good. It's a nice name."

"I think so too," Wanda says, and then Morgan's attention is dragged away by Rhodey calling to her, and Wanda is left leveraging herself back to her feet, Pepper standing in front of her. And she's shuffling her feet like a child and saying, "I hope you don't mind, I just...if Tony hadn't done what he did I wouldn't be getting to have Vision's children, and I-"

She's cut off by Pepper stepping forward and pulling her into her arms, and she hesitates. Tony's wife, his _widow_ , is hugging her, the man she spent years of her life plotting vengeance against, and she's quietly awkward. Pepper smells of a sweet perfume, and when she pushes Wanda back there are tears in her eyes. "I know you and Tony rarely saw eye to eye," she says, and Wanda averts her gaze in shame. "But he saw so much good in you. I know he did. Anything you need, Wanda, anything at all-"

"I can't take your money," she says, and Pepper looks at her with something so sad and wistful in her eyes. "I just...I want to leave this behind. All of it. I don't want to owe anyone anything. Whether that's money, or just an explanation, I..." Pepper is staring at her, and she trails off into silence, into the desperate hope of a hand pressed to her belly.

"Then it seems like the biggest favour I can do you in have the Stark Industries PR team write your official statement that you're leaving the Avengers and leaving the US," Pepper says, as if it's so simple. As if she can close this chapter of her life with a few typed paragraphs sent to every major media outlet in the country.

"I can't ask you to do that-"

"I have a team of professionals whose entire job is to figure out ways to tell the public what's happening in our lives," Pepper says. "And I'd be happy to let them handle your leaving. They can frame it all however you want."

Wanda looks up at her, the honest concern in her expression, and quietly says, "Will they be able to stop anyone trying to find me?"

"Of course they will," Pepper says. "We don't have to tell them where you're going, only that you won't be in the US anymore. They don't even have to let the media know that you're pregnant if you don't want that. Trust me, Wanda, they're very skilled at spinning any decision to frame you in a positive light."

"Do you think I should keep it a secret?" Wanda asks softly. "From everyone? You think I shouldn't let the world know?" She curls her fingers into her dress and says, "I suppose people will think I'm being selfish."

"That's all your decision, Wanda," Pepper says, soft and gentle. "It's your life to choose to share or not. You've made this choice for yourself and for your children. It doesn't matter what anyone else thinks, as long as this is the right choice for you. And it is."

"But what if the world needs me?" Wanda asks, the question that's been chasing itself around her head at night, every time she thinks she's found the property that might be her home in Sokovia. Every time she imagines the life there, the sort of life she dreamt of when she was a child, a white picket fence and flowers in a window box and owning a business and having children with someone she loves. Maybe she owes the world her powers.

"Then, frankly, fuck the world," Pepper says, and the harshness makes Wanda start. "You've lost so much, and you...you're just a kid. Stop joining this fight and go have your family. If you want to come back one day, well, I'm sure Rhodey will have you." She falls quiet for a moment, then says. "By the way, I think that house you've been looking at is perfect for a family of three. So I put in an offer."

"Pepper-"

"I'm the sole owner of Stark Industries, believe me, I have more than enough money to buy every Avenger a new house and still send Morgan to any college she wants," Pepper says, and Wanda lowers her gaze, pressing a hand to her bump. "If you insist, you can pay me back when you get on your feet out there. But investing in Sokovia now that it's rebuilt is honestly a good idea. If you move back, then I have a pretty holiday home ready. But you can stay there as long as you want, no rent necessary."

"You can't-"

"I know how you're feeling right now," she says, and Wanda bites her lip against the tears stinging her eyes. "I have my home, and my daughter, and my support system. And if I can help you even a little bit towards having the stability that I have, that's all I want for you."

"Thank you." The two words leave Wanda's lips in a quiet, sad sigh, and she curls her fingers into the material of her dress, the swell of her belly. Imagines her children beneath the shimmer of Sokovian sunlight, a family home with photos on the walls and wear on the furniture, and she allows herself a small smile.

It's the life she's always dreamed of. If only there wasn't a hole in the dream where Vision should be.


End file.
